Some cities you come to know through their streets; others you have to listen to. Old Safed belongs to the second kind.
As someone born in Safed, these ancient alleys are simply part of my life. For years I walked through them without pausing to think about who had passed this way centuries before. Only when you look closely at the story of the city do you grasp how rare and extraordinary the era of its great Torah scholars and Kabbalists truly was.
In this one small city — at times in overlapping years — lived and worked Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Shulchan Aruch; Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, the Ramak; Rabbi Isaac Luria, the holy Ari; Rabbi Moshe Alshich; Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, author of Lecha Dodi; and Rabbi Elazar Azikri, author of Sefer Charedim and the hymn Yedid Nefesh.
It is hard to imagine another moment in which so many spiritual giants, whose influence reached every Jewish community, were gathered in so small a place. They engaged in halachah, in Kabbalah, in the interpretation of the Torah, in prayer and in sacred poetry. They breathed the same mountain air and walked the same alleys we walk today.
We may never know exactly what was said at any meeting between them, or in which alley they met. Yet simply knowing that they lived and worked in Safed at the same time allows us to return, in our imagination, to one of the most fascinating periods in the history of the city and of Jewish thought.
Safed in the Sixteenth Century
In the wake of the expulsion from Spain and the upheavals that swept through Jewish communities, scholars, halachic authorities, Kabbalists and liturgical poets made their way to Safed. The city became a major centre of Torah, halachah and Kabbalah.
Safed became the meeting point of very different worlds of Jewish creativity. Rabbi Yosef Karo devoted himself to halachah and to ordering the patterns of Jewish life. Rabbi Moshe Alshich delved into the interpretation and homiletics of the Torah. The Ramak and the Ari explored the inner world of the Torah and its mystical teachings. Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and Rabbi Elazar Azikri gave voice to spiritual longing through hymns still sung today.
It was a period in which Safed itself became one great house of study — a place where halachah, Kabbalah, prayer, commentary and poetry met and shaped one another.
Entering the Pardes
Jewish tradition speaks of four ways of understanding the Torah, known by the acronym PaRDeS: peshat (the plain meaning), remez (the hinted meaning), derash (the interpreted meaning) and sod (the hidden meaning).
Peshat is the direct sense of the text. Remez seeks the ideas concealed between the words. Derash expands the meaning of the verses through the interpretation of the sages of Israel. Sod turns toward the inner, hidden layer of the Torah.
In sixteenth-century Safed these layers existed side by side. Rabbi Yosef Karo ruled on matters of halachah. Rabbi Moshe Alshich immersed himself in commentary and homiletics. The Ramak, the Ari, Rabbi Elazar Azikri and the circles of Kabbalists turned to the inner world of the Torah.
Perhaps this is one of the things that made Safed so singular. It was not home to a single path but to an entire pardes of Torah. Plain meaning and hidden meaning, law and mysticism, study and prayer, thought and poetry — all met within one city, in one rare span of years.
The Ramak and the Ari: Two Giants of Mystical Teaching
Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, the Ramak, was one of the central figures of Kabbalah in Safed. He sought to arrange and present kabbalistic ideas in a systematic, lucid form, notably in his work Pardes Rimonim.
Toward the end of the Ramak's life, Rabbi Isaac Luria — the holy Ari — arrived in Safed. He lived and taught in the city for a relatively short time, yet his influence on the world of Kabbalah was immense. His teaching addressed the creation of the world, shattering and repair, exile and redemption, and the spiritual role of the human being.
The teaching of the Ari was transmitted chiefly through his disciples, foremost among them Rabbi Chaim Vital. The ideas that developed within that circle became, over the years, a central part of Jewish thought and mysticism.
Walking today among the synagogues and alleys of Safed, it is hard not to think of the years when the Ramak, the Ari and their disciples lived and taught within this small space.
Rabbi Yosef Karo: Between Law and Mystery
One of the most central figures to have worked in Safed was Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Beit Yosef and the Shulchan Aruch. His halachic work became one of the most important foundations of Jewish law.
Rabbi Yosef Karo was not only a decisor of law. His figure embodies the particular union that existed in Safed between the world of halachah and the world of spirit and mystery.
The synagogue bearing his name in the Old City continues to tell his story. According to tradition, his house of study stood on this spot. The building was damaged over the years by the earthquakes that struck Safed, and was restored and rebuilt — yet the tradition attached to it has been preserved.
Beneath the synagogue lies an ancient room in which, according to tradition, Rabbi Yosef Karo studied and where the Maggid revealed itself to him. A visitor may enter, sit and pray in a place identified for generations with the study hall of the author of the Shulchan Aruch — not merely reading about him in a book, but standing within that same space of stone, Torah and prayer.
Rabbi Elazar Azikri and the Longing of Yedid Nefesh
Rabbi Elazar Azikri was a Kabbalist, preacher and poet born in Safed. He composed Sefer Charedim and the hymn Yedid Nefesh, which became one of the best known and best loved hymns in the Jewish world.
The hymn gives voice to love, yearning and longing for closeness to God. It was born within the spiritual world of sixteenth-century Safed, yet it is still sung today in Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities, in many different melodies and versions.
When Yedid Nefesh is sung on a Friday evening or at the third Sabbath meal, a spiritual creation born here, among the alleys of Safed, is being carried forward. It is a reminder that the influence of the city's Kabbalists does not belong only to the past; it continues to live in the prayer and poetry of the Jewish people.
Synagogues Where the Past Is Still Alive
The story of Safed is not found only in history books. It lives on in the ancient synagogues that remain at the heart of the city.
The Abuhav Synagogue, the Rabbi Yosef Karo Synagogue and the Alshich Synagogue are not simply buildings that testify to a distant era. They are active synagogues in which people continue to pray, to read from the Torah, to celebrate and to keep a living tradition.
Stepping inside, you feel how the past of Safed is woven into its present. The Torah scrolls are still opened, the prayers are still said, and the alleys still lead worshippers and visitors to those same sacred places.
The Abuhav Synagogue: Art, Prayer and Ancient Torah Scrolls
There are places where you need not close your eyes to travel back in time. It is enough simply to walk in.
Entering the Abuhav Synagogue, it is impossible not to look up. The dome, the colours, the paintings, the ornamentation and the sacred symbols on the walls turn the entire space into a work of spiritual art. The walls do not merely enclose those who pray; they tell a story.
Three Torah arks stand along the wall facing Jerusalem. The synagogue preserves ancient and rare Torah scrolls. According to tradition, one of them is attributed to Rabbi Yitzchak Abuhav and was brought to Safed by his disciples. That scroll is taken out for reading only on special occasions: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Shavuot.
Another Torah scroll kept there is associated with Rabbi Suleiman Ohana, a Kabbalist who came up to Safed from Morocco and belonged to the circle of the city's mystics.
You can sit in the synagogue, study the paintings and ornaments, pray where generations of Safed's Jews have prayed, and feel for a moment that the distance between past and present is narrowing.
The synagogue is not a museum. It is a living house of prayer. The visitor does not merely stand before relics of the past, but enters a place where tradition continues to be lived.
The Alshich Synagogue
The Alshich Synagogue is named for Rabbi Moshe Alshich, one of the outstanding preachers and biblical commentators active in sixteenth-century Safed.
Rabbi Moshe Alshich expresses another facet of Safed's pardes: the world of homily and interpretation. Alongside the masters of law and mysticism, the city was home to a sage who examined the verses of the Torah closely and gave them moral and spiritual meaning.
The synagogue that bears his name is part of the route that links the ancient synagogues. It reminds us that the spiritual creativity of Safed was not composed of a single voice, but of many voices that completed one another.
Not Reading About History, but Stepping Into It
The best way to come to know Old Safed is on foot. The distances between the synagogues are short, yet each alley opens another point of view: a stone arch, a hidden courtyard, an ancient door, a gallery, or a vista over the hills of the Galilee.
Anyone who enters the Rabbi Yosef Karo Synagogue, continues to the Abuhav Synagogue and passes the Alshich Synagogue is not merely visiting historic sites. They are walking inside a story that has not yet ended.
You can look at the ornamentation, contemplate the Torah scrolls, sit where generations of sages studied and prayed, and add a prayer of your own to a chain that began centuries before us.
Leaving the Rabbi Yosef Karo Synagogue, following the alley to the Abuhav Synagogue and on to the Alshich Synagogue, you begin to understand that Safed as a whole is a kind of open book. Each synagogue is a chapter, each alley a line, and every prayer said within them adds one more word to the story.
The Ancient Cemetery: Resting Place of Giants
The journey in the footsteps of Safed's sages continues from the synagogues to the ancient cemetery, where masters of Torah, halachah and Kabbalah are buried — figures whose influence is felt in the Jewish world to this day.
Among those buried there are the holy Ari; Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, the Ramak; Rabbi Yosef Karo; Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz; Rabbi Moshe Alshich; Rabbi Moshe of Trani, the Mabit; Rabbi David ben Zimra, the Radbaz; Rabbi Yosef of Trani, the Maharit; Rabbi Avraham Dov of Avritch, author of Bat Ayin; Rabbi Chaim Tirer, author of Be'er Mayim Chaim; and Rabbi Leib Ba'al HaYissurim. The grave of Rabbi Yaakov Beirav, one of the central sages active in sixteenth-century Safed, is also identified there.
Near the cemetery is also the site attributed by Safed tradition to the burial of Hannah and her seven sons. Walking among the ancient gravestones makes clear just how extraordinary Safed was.
The same sages who studied, taught and prayed among the city's alleys were laid to rest on the mountain slope, facing the landscape that was part of their lives. From the synagogues where their teaching was heard, through the alleys they walked, to their resting place in the ancient cemetery, Safed allows a visitor to move through the story of these great figures rather than only read about them in books.
The World Beneath the Alleys
The story of Old Safed does not unfold above ground alone. Beneath the stone houses and the alleys lies an entire world of wells, water systems, rooms, passages and underground spaces.
At Beit Avraham there is an ancient water system that includes a well and channels cut into the stone. Alongside it are stone rooms, a tunnel and underground spaces that speak of how people lived and built in Old Safed.
One of the rooms lies close to the ancient chamber beneath the Rabbi Yosef Karo Synagogue, identified by tradition as the room of the Maggid. In another area there are a tunnel and ancient spaces that, according to local tradition, were once connected to the Abuhav Synagogue compound.
Descending into these spaces, you realise that the alleys we see above ground are only part of the story.
Continuing the Journey Through Old Safed
Beit Avraham and the guest apartment Luria — Holiness in the Old City are located at the heart of the historic and spiritual quarter of Old Safed, directly above and beside the Abuhav, Rabbi Yosef Karo and Alshich synagogues.
The location allows visitors to set out on foot among the synagogues, the alleys of the Kabbalists and the historic sites, and to experience Safed in the quiet hours of morning and evening.
Beit Avraham brings together ancient stone spaces, Israeli and Jewish art, heritage, hospitality and events. The apartment Luria — Holiness in the Old City is named in tribute to Rabbi Isaac Luria, the holy Ari, and to the particular spiritual atmosphere of the city.
Anyone who walks the alleys of Old Safed discovers that past and present are not separate from one another. The synagogues are still active, the hymns are still sung, art continues to be created, and the ancient houses continue to fill with life.
For me, this is the essence of Safed: a city that does not merely recount its past, but goes on living within it.